Lara still a major worry for Aussies

The West Indian superstar, just 316 runs away from becoming Test cricket’s all-time leading runscorer, wasted another opportunity to rediscover his batting touch with another miserable score in the tourists’ massive 612 for nine against Queensland this weekend.

The sublime 36 year-old Trinidad left-hander, batting in the unfamiliar position of No 8 after injuring a finger while fielding, scored only one run off five balls before playing fast bowler Mitchell Johnson on to his stumps with a wild attempted cut.

Since arriving in Australia at the start of this month to play for the World XI, Lara has failed to reach double figures in five of his six innings here — , 5, 0 in the one-day series and 5 and 36 in the Super Test match.

The run of low scores leaves him considerably underdone for match batting practice before he faces Glenn McGrath, Brett Lee and Shane Warne at the Gabba from Thursday.

The tourists will be relying heavily on Lara to reproduce his classic form to give them enough runs to put the Australians under pressure after their recent loss of the Ashes to England.

Australian coach John Buchanan said out-of-form Lara was still a "major worry" for his team. "You don’t reach the status in the game that he does by missing out consistently," Buchanan said. "One would suspect if he has missed out a little bit, then there are runs around the corner.

"They (Windies) come here with a bit of an underdog tag.

But they have players of the calibre of Lara, and two left-handers, Lara and (captain Shivnarine) Chanderpaul, who are great players of spin.

"That’s always a major worry to us because they can turn a game at any moment."

Lara injured the top of the little finger on his left hand in dropping a slips catch on day one of the tour match against Queensland.

Lara is one of Test cricket’s greats with 30 centuries— eight of them against Australia since 1993 — and closing in on Australian Allan Border’s all-time record of 11,174 runs in 156 Tests.

The West Indian has 10,859 runs in 118 Tests, placing him third behind Border and another Australian Steve Waugh (10,927 runs in 168 Tests).

Lara is fourth all-time with most Test hundreds, his 30 trailing India’s Sachin Tendulkar’s 34.